Handbook of corporate finance

"The empirical study of firms' financing and investment decisions - empirical corporate finance - are receiving unprecedented coverage by researchers. Armed with large transactional databases and new theories, scholars are revealing the ways that these decisions are determined, affecting such disparate areas as capital structure choice and optimal design of managerial incentives. This volume - the first of two - focuses on econometric issues and methodological trends as well as banking, public offerings, and private sources of capital. Featuring contributions by internationally leading researchers, this survey of empirical corporate finance will serve as the new benchmark for research by graduate students while being accessible to professionals"--Unedited summary from volume 1 book cover. "This second volume of a two-part series examines three major topics. First, it devotes five chapters to the classical issue of capital structure choice. Second, it focuses on the value-implications of major corporate investment and restructuring decisions, then concludes by surveying the role of pay-for-performance type executive compensation contracts on managerial incentives and risk taking behavior. In collaboration with the first volume, this Handbook takes stock of the main empirical findings to date across an unprecedented spectrum of corporate finance issues. The surveys are written by leading empirical researchers who remain active in their respective areas of interest. With few exceptions, the writing style makes the chapters accessible to industry practitioners. For doctoral students and seasoned academics, the surveys offer dense roadmaps into the empirical research landscape and provide suggestions for future work"--Unedited summary from volume 2 book cover.